You’ve heard the saying or seen the bumper sticker: “Think global, act local.” Well beginning Monday, we get our chance. That’s when the filing window opens for all of the dozens of commissions, community colleges, and local school board seats that are on this November’s ballot.

These offices are certainly not as glamorous as the state and federal offices of the even-year elections; but these elected posts are the hard work, indeed the backbone, for political change that has the greatest impact on our Central Coast community.

Advertisement

Tired of a school superintendent spending thousands of taxpayer dollars taking school board members out to lunch and dinner -- sometimes twice in the same day? You can play a part in preventing it. Think a school probably shouldn’t be named after a murderous outlaw? A seat on a school board can keep that from happening --- or get the name changed later. Want to make sure educators are truly intent on educating the next generation of leaders and not just trying to whip up ethnic divisiveness?

Get elected to a local school board: not for power, not for ego, not for money, not just to advance your political ambitions for higher office. But rather, to forge a vision for the future; to work so that the Central Coast community we leave to the next generation might be better than that which we have now, and at the very least, ensure nothing is done to do harm.

So again, Monday is the first day candidates can file for office; the window runs through August 9th.

You can contact your local County Office of Education or your county’s Elections Department for more detail on how to become a candidate. If you truly feel called to this service for the right reasons, we think it’s a wonderful opportunity to become an agent for change and be more than just a spectator to the workings of our Grand Republic. As so eloquently stated by the French political writer Alexis de Tocqueville almost 200 years ago, “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.”

If you believe there are wrongs that need righting, now’s your chance.